The Arms

This is the most complicated area of the golf swing to describe and to find automatism from biokinetical point of view. There are, at least, four main reasons that are responsible for this:


- humans are equipped with two arms that are "programmed" to act independently while their task is to act freely in the space;

- arms are equipped with a lot of muscles and several joints (especially wrist and fingers ones) that enable them to move almost in all possible directions and execute a huge variety of tasks;

- the only one link between the arm and the main body is the shoulder joint; moreover, both shoulder joints are distant from each other a significant way;

- elbow joints are built the way that makes it impossible to tie the forearms to each other during an action.



First, I want to stress that I have concluded that there is no real possibility (and, what is very important, there is no real need, in fact) to find limitations of the fingers, hands and the wrists that could be useful for our purposes. The only one very important role of the fingers and the hands is to hold the club the proper way and the rest is pure physics. It is time now to present the concept of nunchakoo and the role of angular momentum conservation rule (please bare with me, since I am not a physician and want to present it in a most friendly way).

Imagine that your forearm is one stick of a nunchakoo, while the club WITH HANDS ON IT is the second one. The wrists play the role of a chain linking both sticks. Now, according to the physical rule of angular momentum conservation, during a rotational movement of the main body, the momentum is constant in a closed system. Shortly, it means that if the velocity of the rotation is constant nothing changes in a perfect model. In the golf swing, after transition, the rotational velocity initially increases, then decreases before impact letting the club catch the hands, because the main goal is not to maintain the delay (lag) but to hit the ball. The whole trick is to find the proper moment of levelling the clubhead with the grip, or, other words, to find a proper moment for a bottom of the arc to happen. It is not the role of the wrists or hands to find it (although e.g. TGM school insist on "educating hands concept") because the timing would be a protagonist here. This is the role of the proper work of the legs, main body rotation and upper arms to prepare the position that would automatically find the correct moment in a due time without even thinking about it.

Please, understand correctly what I try to say. I am not trying to say that the concept of training wrists/hands is wrong - au contre, it is a great concept how to hit the ball properly. The human brain sees the action of ballstriking the way that we need to bring the ball airborne - this is a real katharsis for all flippers and bad shots. And it is not easy to fight any subconscious rules, but not that difficult. When one of my friends, an avid physician, explained me the momentum conservation rule, I have started to hit shots with very deep divots well after the ball so my clubhead even stopped in the ground for a milisecond. Thus, one either have to convince their brains to trust in the loft of the clubhead or to educate their hands. The only one minus is that wrists and hands cannot be trained enough well - and this is true, unfortunately, because we are not robots. It is much easier to leave it to the physics of our 3-D reality.

But, back to the merits - the angular momentum conservation rule is responsible for creating and maintaining lag when only one of our arms parts can play the role of the nunchakoo chain. The wrists are biomechanically born for this goal. CoG shift that enables to turn on the lead leg (i.e. CoG shift forward) makes the arms be in a correct position at impact - in front of the ball, if needed - if only the arms are subdued to the body turn. The upper stick of the nunchakoo (i.e. the forearms) follows the body turn and CoG shift letting the lower stick to catch it late enough.



The biggest problem is that we have two forearms that cannot be tied to each other, yet it would be the best if both arms worked as an unit. Unfortunately, it is not possible because of the distance between shoulders joints and the elbow joints build. The latter consist of three independent joints closed in one big joint - they are responsible for all the motions the elbow joint is able to make. For the simplicity, we concentrate on two planes of the elbow joints motion - bending/unbending and rotation.



In The Legs chapter i have said that the elbow joint is homologeous to the knee joint, yet there are some crucial differences between them. The first one is that the elbow joint (opposite to the knee joint) can rotate only when the arm is straight . The second one is that the elbow joints (also opposite to the knee joints) may and usually do work in different planes.



Let's deal first with the rotational aspect - a bent arm in elbow can rotate roughly 180 degrees with a fixed point of the elbow due to the forearm rotation; a straight arm in elbow can rotate almost 300 degrees (thus, the elbow joint can add more than 90 degrees), which is a huge difference, especially, when we think that the clubhead can be rotated the same huge amount. It says us that there is practically no possibility of find a biokinetical limitation that would make the arm movement automatic. But there is a chance - we have two arms and two elbow joints that work in different planes. It's a bliss, since one of them can limit the other one relatively easily. The right arm is bent in elbow at impact, therefore, it cannot rotate as much (or better said, it finds its limits in the motion earlier) as the straight left arm at impact. Moreover, there is a limit of the forearm turn in relation to the elbow joint depending on the grip - look at post-secret Hogan's setup position - his inside part of the right elbow is very well visible from the FO, while his right hand is on top of the grip in weak position. IMHO, he found the rotational limit of the forearm-elbow system just at setup and maintained it until the very impact. It would excellently explain how his right elbow drops down at transition - because it cannot do anything else if the main goal of the downswing is to keep the elbow-forearm system position fixed - at impact his elbow inside part is visible. Moreover, Hogan had both arms slightly bent at address what seemed to help him not to start the backswing with an overrotation of the elbow-forearm system in both arms.



The bending aspect is more tricky. It is much easier to obey the rule of keeping the distal parts perpendicular to the spine when both arms are straight. It also gives a much better feeling of both arms working in unisono. Lastly, although straight arms in elbows enable bigger rotation, sort of "blocking" both elbow joints takes them practically out of play - like a human was equipped with arms without elbow joints. This is what can be observed in Moe Norman's action to a degree - arms perpendicular to the spine "urging" to be straight as soon as possible at the downswing.

IMO, the weak point of this scenario is that the only one link of both distal parts to the main body are the shoulders joints that are too weak taking into account the length and the weight of the arms (+ the club). This may be the most evident proof why Norman was not a long hitter, although his brain made his pivot and arms work great together in synch. Lastly, it is worth stressing that Moe had a very strong grip of the right hand and not so strong of the left one (opposite to Hogan) that promotes having both inside elbow parts to work more parallelly to each other.



So, now we come to the second golden rule of biokinetics (first was treating about perpendicularity of the arms to the spine during the rotational motion), i.e. to link the upper part of the arms to the main body during the motion. It's dynamically possible only when the main body is in a open position at impact - since this is the only one position that can ensure the left upper part be pinned to the open chest while the right upper arm is, say, at the shirt seam. A square or a closer main body at impact would inevitably lead to the necessity of having both upper part of arms in the front of the body, which is equal to increased possibility of timing issues to happen - arms less subdued to the pivot.

It can be done both ways - to want to subdue the left arm first or the right one first, or both. It is much easier to let the lead arm be pinned to the chest via the turning main body (this is what the majority of rotary swingers do, me included until now); however, it would leave the right hand in a very weak position with the inside part of the elbow more facing the target (especially with the strong right hand grip). The right arm action solo brings a danger of thrusting both elbow joints (and, consequently, both arms) in the front of the body which is bad thing from a biokinetical point of view.

The golden means is to try to subdue both arms simultaneously - right elbow must go down and close to the hip (which is easy thing to do taking into acount the CoG shift onto the lead leg during transition) while letting the lead upper arm be pinned to the chest at impact. Hogan's right arm action (I call it the right elbow is searching the left one in order to be as close as possible to it) makes his left upper arm be away from the body at first but before impact it is already pinned to his turning and opening to the target chest. It appears to be easy while maintaining the afore-mentioned limit between forearm and elbow rotation - even me, with my body flaws, can do it now decenty to a degree.

Lastly, when Hogan described the famous concept of tieing both arms with having both elbows close to each other during the motion, he forgot to uncover the elbow joints on the picture. It is obvious that both elbows cannot be turned to each other with their inside parts but rather be perpendicular to each other.





I think it is useless to analyze the optimal elbows position at setup without referring it to the wrists positions. In order to find a limit at the end of the backswing one of the crucial thing from biokinetical point of view is the amount of forearm rotation available, if I may say this way.

If you e.g. combine a weak LH grip with elbow pointing out you will find it may lead easily to overrotation (moreover, can lead also to a too inside takeaway); if you combine it with elbow pointing back (to the pocket), your left forearm has already established a certain amount of preset rotation. The same rule applies to a strong LH grip - one should not combine this kind of grip with elbow pointing back since it may appear that the rotation will end too soon before backswing is completed.

Therefore, the whole trick is to find an optimal combination of the whole elbow-wrist system at setup.



RH elbow joint should always point back since the rear arm job is mainly to fold and not to rotate. This fact creates a double security limitation. Moreover, IMHO, the best scenario is if the RH grip is weak (as in case of Hogan) while having elbow pointing in (already presetted a clockwise forearm rotation) since it also prevents from a too inside takeaway via the right wrist hinge, as well as it eliminates the possibility of overrotation of the right forearm during the downswing.

Having analyzed a lot of post-secret Hogan's footages I noticed that his right hand grip was always in a weak position, while his LH grip was "moving" between weak and neutral ones. Together with this slight grip changes his left elbow position at setup also varied - from pointing back (especially with short clubs) to pointing more out (especially with a driver). I am sure he found a method of establishing an optimal amount of his left forearm preset rotation that enabled him to finish his backswing in a due time without even thinking about it.

Since we all are different individuals, I think it is the best to experiment with various combinations of elbow-wrist system positions at setup, especially as regards the lead arm. The right arm's role is not to disturb at the backswing and deliver a pivot guided power at the downswing.

The primary importance motion of a wrist is hinging-unhinging (dorsi and palmar flexions), while cocking-uncocking (ulnar and radial deviations) is, say, of secondary importance. You can easily see how much easier is to hinge than to cock the wrist as well as how much far away you can hinge (up to ca. 90*) than to cock (up to ca. 45*). This fact determines that if both hands are tied in a golf grip, and the directions of the motions of both wrists are just close to each other (left wrist cocks while right one hinges; although usually there is no straight 90* relation between them, it is close to it in a proper grip), the direction of the total movement will be rather determined by hinging, not by cocking.

A strong RH grip will cause the right wrist to hinge too much to the inside during takeaway and backswing then. A weak RH grip will cause the wrist to hinge more up on the correct backswing plane automatically, leading the direction of the LH wrist cocking also on the correct plane without the necessity of toying with forearm rotation.

Too bad I did not know it before - I would spare a lot of hours in search of an optimal takeaway and backswing.



Now, if the plane is correct, nothing prevents both wrist from finding their anatomical limitation at the top and achieving a great angle between forearm and shaft. Just it is "a hell of a wrist cock". Please also note that in such a situation, the club reaches the straight angle towards the forearm rather soon - that's why Hogan's shaft was perpendicular to the ground just when his forearms were parallel to the ground. Thus, he might easily shorten his backswing because it feels like you are already set much before the time when the shaft is parallel at the top. Moreover, post-secret Hogan could swing the club with a short LH thumb, what emphasizes it even more (it's anatomically easier to achieve a big wrist cock with a long thumb). He had much better control and he did not lose anything from his lag. Simple, huh ?



Lastly, in a ideal model, the grip of the LH should be perpendicular to the RH one, i.e. one should combine a strongish LH with a weakish RH, but it's difficult to do because of the fact that the RH grip is somehow determined by the position of the LH thumb on the shaft.